AMA and AMF give embarrassing “calls” for centralised firearm storage

Another couple of entrants appeared in the conga line of Australian anti-firearm organisations hoping to take advantage of the Las Vegas shooting to push the anti-firearm agenda.

The Australian Medical Association and the Alannah and Madeline Foundation teamed up to deliver another bit of anti-firearm agitprop through their favourite mouthpiece, the Herald Sun, to push “calls” for centralised storage of firearms:

“The Sunday Herald Sun­understands that authorities have considered gun club storage to stop criminals stealing guns from homes. The call comes just days after the Las Vegas shooting, where crazed Stephen Paddock used automatic weapons to kill 59 concertgoers and injure more than 500.

AMA president Michael Gannon said gun clubs were the safest place to store guns.

“Farmers should be storing weapons securely on their property, but there’s no reason a sporting shooter in a metropolitan area needs to keep a gun at home,” he said. “We’re not calling on a ban, but for the appropriate use of firearms.”

The call. From who? And the Herald Sun fails to disclose sources on just who in authority actually wants this. And why someone needs a firearm is none of your authoritarian business.

This isn’t the first time that Dr Michael Gannon has opened his mouth on this subject. We’ve already touched on before the relationship between the AMA and the anti-firearm cultural marxism of the Labor Party and it’s union influence.

But really, what do you expect from an organisation that it’s members’ professions are arrogantly marketed as “your specialist in life”. Or glorified pharmaceutical salesmen, depending on what end of the cynicism spectrum you may fall on.

Doctors should treat illnesses and the sick and that’s the end of it. And stick to cleaning up those alleged 18,000 deaths from medical malpractice annually and fake doctors putting the public at risk.

Then Lesley “Lovejoy” Podesta of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation added her two cents:

“The Alannah & Madeline Foundation, set up to honour three victims of Port Arthur, said taking guns out of the home would improve safety.Chief executive Lesley Podesta said: “We have let individuals stockpile huge numbers of firearms in suburban areas … storing firearms at gun clubs makes sense. There is an ­increased risk in homes.”

But she said there was also a risk that gun clubs could ­become targets for crooks. A real-time national gun register, proposed after Martin Bryant killed 35 people at Port Arthur, was still not operating and Ms Podesta said she was “at a loss” as to why.

Justice Minister Michael Keenan said information was being migrated to the new Australian Firearms Information Network. But government sources said the register would not be operational until late next year.”

So, instead of criminals breaking into 1000 homes to steal firearms, they will break into one location and steal 1000? Most firearm ranges are in non-metropolitan locations, so Police response will likely be even worse than to a metropolitan break-in. As for Podesta’s feigned outrage over lack of a national firearm registry, given the string of failures just this past year for both firearm registries and federal government departments in terms of data security, she’s whistling past the graveyard.

Barry’s Firearms was a centralised storage hub that had the strongest storage requirements possible, in the state with the strictest storage laws, just down the road from a 24 hour Police station and it still got knocked off. A Kennard’s in Newcastle was also knocked off and three dozen firearms stolen. An ADF base in Taree was broken into earlier in the year and firearms stolen. And on it goes.

And there is no increased risk of firearm storage in homes in the hands of licence holders, unless it’s criminals that kill their children with illegal firearms or licence holders trying to protect their homes from home invasion a la David Dunstan.

Would Podesta have the same view if Dunstan’s kids were harmed by the same knife wielding assailant because David was unable to access his firearm safe? No, they would likely still find a way to victim blame and make it about firearms somehow. Because after all, David Dunstan is just “an unemployed victim of globalisation who needs a gun to feel more masculine”, right Lesley?

Registration and centralised storage are just paper cuts on the way to total firearm confiscation. Why Australian anti-firearm organisations don’t just come out and admit they want all firearms removed as per the United Nations Small Arms Treaty, we don’t know. It would be far more believable than any of the ridiculous public statements they put out these days.

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Whist I always like to hear from the doctors union, if I want a medical opinion on firearms, I’ll go to the professionals, the people that the doctors go to to help and advise them on handling and studying epidemics – the Centers for Disease Control. fortunately, they have been tasked with researching ways to reduce the threat of firearm related violence, by Barack Obama no less!

Here are some key findings from that report, “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” released in June 2013:

1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

3. Mass shootings and accidental firearm deaths account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths, and both are declining:
“The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths. Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” The report also notes, “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

5. Gun buyback/turn-in programs are “ineffective” in reducing crime:
“There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-backs may increase awareness of firearm violence. However, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, guns recovered in the buy-back were not the same guns as those most often used in homicides and suicides (Kuhn et al., 2002).”

6. Stolen guns and retail/gun show purchases account for very little crime:
“More recent prisoner surveys suggest that stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals. … According to a 1997 survey of inmates, approximately 70 percent of the guns used or possess by criminals at the time of their arrest came from family or friends, drug dealers, street purchases, or the underground market.”

7. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are not homicides, but suicides:
“Between the years 2000-2010 firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States.”

Having settled the firearms issue from a medical perspective, now perhaps the doctors union could focus on saving the 18,000 lives that their members take and the 50,000 that they permanently injure through medical error every year?

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Firearm Owners United

Firearm Owners United was founded in response to the many hysterical voices crying out for further gun control in this country.
We already go through so many hoops to get our firearms as it is. We do not need more hoops. We don’t need a mother/father figure deciding what’s the best for us.
We are Law Abiding Firearm Owners, and we are sick of being treated like second-class citizens.